


Spirit Gum, Stage Punches, and the Art of Falling Softly

by Lokei



Category: Glee
Genre: Friendship, M/M, NYADA, Past Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel, Past Relationship(s), Slice of Life, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is perceptive. And also stubborn. And because of these two things, there are several other things he knows, the most important of which are these:</p><p>One—Letting himself fall in love with someone like Kurt Hummel will be glorious right up until he inevitably lands, heart pancaked on the sidewalk.</p><p>Two—He’s going to do it anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spirit Gum, Stage Punches, and the Art of Falling Softly

**Author's Note:**

> I am perfectly happy Blaine and Kurt are together for the long haul. But I loved and recognized a familiar friend in Adam, and he needed just a little more time. Because not all loves are meant for the ages, but that doesn't make them less real or less important. Also I really wanted more Apples.

Contrary to the whispers of much of the snootier elements of NYADA’s student population, Adam is not an idiot.

Neither is he a martyr, despite the speaking glances Zach sends him across the room during Apples rehearsals.

What Adam is, is perceptive. And also stubborn. And because of these two things, there are several other things he knows, the most important of which are these:

One—Letting himself fall in love with someone like Kurt Hummel will be glorious right up until he inevitably lands, heart pancaked on the sidewalk.

Two—He’s going to do it anyway.

\- - - - -

Adam isn't in the musical theater track at NYADA. He likes to sing, loves playing around with arrangements, and has dabbled with the idea of songwriting, but he's actually majoring in the more technical side of things--specifically, set and lighting design. He makes sure to take a few performance classes every semester just to keep limber, and because he enjoys them, but he knows perfectly well he's your basic chorus quality. All the groups he's tried out for, acapella or not, have made sure to tell him so when turning him down.

Which is why, sophomore spring, he starts what will become the Adam's Apples. 

"We're going to spend our lives competing against each other and thousands of others in this business," he explains to Zach over 2 AM pizza. "So why not have a group that's just about the joy of performing? No auditions, no prerequisites, just people who love to have fun with the music."

"You're nuts." Zach declares.

"I am not."

"You're not a performance major, and you want to start a *show choir*? Pretty sure that's the definition of 'nuts.'"

Adam gives Zach a long, flirty once-over and lets his gaze linger significantly when he answers, "Pretty sure it's not."

Zach colors, but takes it well for a straight boy, and just throws a wadded up greasy napkin at him. Adam probably deserved that. He goes back to thinking up potential names for his group.

\- - - - - 

When Adam sees Kurt Hummel in the hallway before the Winter Showcase, he raises an eyebrow, thinks "long limbs, cute face, killer hairdo. Wonder if he goes here?" but thinks no more about him until Dean Thibideaux's announcement. Adam sees the friendly, supportive joy on the boy's -- Kurt Hummel's face -- turn to something akin to panic and he smothers a sympathetic smile. The Dean does that to everyone, even the non-performance majors. Despite that, Adam hopes this new boy doesn't crack under the pressure, because Adam's upgraded his assessment of Kurt's face from 'cute' to 'interesting.'

Then the interval is over and Kurt gets up to sing. And his voice is--and his eyes are--

Adam doesn't actually have the words for it, but he can tell that however collected and polished he looks, something in this beautiful boy is all shivery and broken on the inside, and he desperately wants to be the one to put the pieces back together again, with whatever means necessary. Caramel maybe, or spirit gum. He also wants that voice for the Apples.

"He's going to get in, and I'm going to get him to sing with us," he leans over to murmur to Miko, who shakes her head at him.

"Smitten already."

"I am not." 

"Yes you are, but so am I, so it's not a bad thing. That boy can *sing.*"

\- - - - - -

From the very beginning, Apples rehearsals are the best sort of chaos. Partly because they're all under incredible amounts of pressure from their various professors and are forced to be disciplined about their disciplines all the time, which makes Adam reluctant to impose too much order beyond making sure that they all shut up for long enough to hear the choreo directions. Partly it's because he has the most glorious bunch of misfits in his group that anyone has ever seen, and with such a variety of personalities, styles, and backgrounds, it's like something between herding cats and watching a perpetual motion machine.

There’s Zach, of course, who is majoring in performance, particularly straight plays as opposed to musicals, but who’s already talking about going for an MFA in creative writing after NYADA because the more plays he reads and performs, the more he’d rather write his own. There’s Miko who dresses like a baby doll, curses like a sailor, and bakes heavenly chocolate chip cookies, and who creates exquisite choreography. There’s Nick who’s in set design with Adam, who looks like he should be a computer programmer but who will only touch ‘the bloody electronic boxes’ to use AutoCAD because he loathes technology for just about everything else. There’s Helga who wants to go into stand-up but sings like an opera star when she wants to, Ahmed who can’t actually sing a note but tries valiantly and who does actually dance really well...it’s a grand zoo all together, and he only makes a little bit of a face when Nick decides he’s going to start calling Adam ‘the ringmaster.’

He’d point out that ringmasters work in circuses, not zoos, but he’s not their keeper either, so...

Adam’s fond of them all, even when he can’t stand the way they fail to harmonize or throw paper airplanes in rehearsal or argue about what songs to arrange next. They’re not exactly classy, and they won’t win any awards for precision, but they support each other in-group and out, turning up to each others’ performances and shows and critiquing portfolios and audition clothing choices. 

Without the Apples to pull them all in, Adam would in the course of a regular life at NYADA maybe have met less than half of them. And when he sees Kurt Hummel looking at the audition sign-up sheet with a sort of lost and lonely air, Adam knows he’ll fit right in.

\- - - - -

Blaine’s existence was like a black hole in the astrophysics of living life in Kurt’s orbit. Theoretically, Adam knew Blaine (or someone like him) had to exist to leave such a big, sucking hole in Kurt’s life, but finding out some new proof of his reality hits Adam every time like a punch his scene partner forgot to pull.

Adam can take a hit--he understands broken hearts, had one truly agonizing mess of a relationship he’d left behind in England, and a string of smaller disappointments and amicable near-misses here in New York--but what really hurts about these reminders of the void-that-was-Blaine is the way they hit Kurt.

He’ll be in the middle of conversation, with Adam, with Rachel, with any of the Apples, and without thinking, he starts to refer to Blaine, and gets as far as “Bla--my ex” and then flinches, sometimes noticeably, and sometimes more notably by trying so very hard not to flinch at all.

Adam feels for him, he really does, and he tries hard to pretty much always be there with a cheerful anecdote or subtle redirection to give Kurt a chance to get his stage face back on, and he never asks Kurt for more than Kurt offers, about his history or his future.

Subtle’s not really one of Adam’s strong suits, though, and naturally, others call him on it.

“You realize you’re like, way more patient with him than any sane man would be, right?” Ahmed says at one point, and Adam gives him a raspberry ‘pffff’ of dismissal. He’s not particularly interested in Ahmed’s dating advice; the boy goes through dates like he’s a Middle Eastern Jack Harkness. 

“First loves are messy,” is all he says, and even if that’s not always true, he’s not surprised Kurt’s was. Adam’s pretty sure that boy has no concept of pulling a punch: wherever he goes, he puts all his weight behind it. Adam’s pretty okay with waiting to go further with Kurt until he himself is braced to deal with the impact of having all that attention on himself. 

\- - - - - -

After their search for a romantic movie to call their own ends at an arthouse theater playing a Jane Austen marathon, of all things--which Kurt has apparently never seen or read, and that is one of those egregious insults to his heritage that Adam declares will not be allowed to stand--Kurt is cajoled into admitting that _Sense and Sensibility_ can be ‘their’ movie, because, if nothing else, Alan Rickman’s voice reading poetry alone makes the film worth watching. In the spirit of the afternoon, Kurt demands a trip to somewhere classy for tea afterwards, and Adam abuses Yelp shamelessly to be able to oblige.

They end up in a more than slightly ridiculous Alice in Wonderland themed tea-house, but Kurt finds it charming, and on his way back from the loo, Adam crosses the floor and buries his nose in Kurt’s hair from behind, nuzzling and inhaling as obnoxiously as possible as the younger man flails over his tea and scones. 

“Mmmm, you smell like vanilla and laughter,” he proclaims, and Kurt tips his head back to direct that laughter straight into his face.

“You are ridiculous,” Kurt says, fondness brightening his eyes and curving his lips and making Adam’s heart thump hard like landing on a stunt pillow after the trap door falls.

“All right,” Adam smiles back. “I guess I’ll own that one.”


End file.
